Archdiocese of Lyons

The Archdiocese
of Lyons (Lugdunensis) comprises the Department of the Rhône
(except the Canton of Villeurbanne, which belongs to the Diocese
of Grenoble)
and of the Loire. The Concordat
of 1801 assigned as the boundaries of the
Archdiocese of Lyons the Departments of the Rhône, the
Loire, and the Ain and as suffragans the Dioceses of Mende,
Grenoble, and Chambéry.
The Archdiocese of Lyons was authorized by Letters Apostolic of 29
November, 1801, to unite with his title the titles of the
suppressed metropolitan Sees of Vienne and Embrun (see: GRENOBLE,
GAP).
In 1822 the Department
of Ain was separated from the Archdiocese of
Lyons to form the Diocese
of Belley; the title of the suppressed church
of Embrun was transferred to the Archdiocese
of Aix, and the Archdiocese of Lyons and
Vienne had henceforth as suffragans Langres,
Autun,
Dijon,
St.
Claude, and Grenoble.

Contents

1 History

2 Modern Principal
Archbishops of Lyons

3 Chapters and Colleges

4 Principal Saints

5 Hermitages

6 Liturgy

7 Churches

8 Pilgrimages

9 Religious Congregations

10 Statistics

History

History.
It appears to have been proved by Mgr Duchesne, despite the local
traditions of many Churches, that in all three parts of Gaul
in the second century there was but a single organized Church,
that of Lyons. The "Deacon of Vienne", martyred at Lyons
during the persecution of 177, was probably a deacon installed at
Vienne by the ecclesiastical authority of Lyons. The confluence of
the Rhône and the Saône, where sixty Gallic tribes had
erected the famous altar to Rome and Augustus, was also the centre
from which Christianity was gradually propagated throughout Gaul.
The presence at Lyons of numerous Asiatic Christians and their
almost daily communications with the Orient were likely to arouse
the susceptibilities of the Gallo-Romans. A persecution arose
under Marcus Aurelius. Its victims at Lyons numbered forty-eight,
half of them of Greek origin, half Gallo-Roman, among others St.
Blandina, and St.
Pothinus, first Bishop of Lyons, sent to Gaul
by St.
Polycarp about the middle of the second
century. The legend according to which he was sent by St. Clement
dates from the twelfth century and is without foundation. The
letter addressed to the Christians of Asia and Phrygia in the name
of the faithful of Vienne and Lyons, and relating the persecution
of 177, is considered by Ernest Renan as one of the most
extraordinary documents possessed by any literature; it is the
baptismal certificate of Christianity in France. The successor of
St. Pothinus was the illustrious St.
Irenæus, 177-202.

The discovery on the Hill of
St.
Sebastian of ruins of a naumachia
capable of being transformed into an amphitheatre, and of some
fragments of inscriptions apparently belonging to an altar of
Augustus, has led several archæologists to believe that the
martyrs of Lyons suffered death on this hill. Very ancient
tradition, however, represents the church of Ainay as erected at
the place of their martyrdom. The crypt of St. Pothinus, under the
choir of the church of St. Nizier was destroyed in 1884. But there
are still revered at Lyons the prison cell of St. Pothinus, where
Anne of Austria, Louis
XIV, and Pius
VII came to pray, and the crypt of St. Irenæus
built at the end of the fifth century by St. Patiens, which
contains the body of St. Irenæus. There are numerous
funerary inscriptions of primitive Christianity in Lyons; the
earliest dates from the year 334. In the second and third
centuries the See of Lyons enjoyed great renown throughout Gaul,
witness the local legends of Besançon and of several other
cities relative to the missionaries sent out by St. Irenæus.
Faustinus, bishop in the second half of the third century, wrote
to St. Cyprian and Pope
Stephen I, in 254, regarding the Novatian
tendencies of Marcian, Bishop of Arles.
But when Diocletian
by the new provincial organization had taken away from Lyons its
position as metropolis
of the three Gauls, the prestige of Lyons diminished for a time.

At the end of the empire and
during the Merovingian
period several saints are counted among the Bishops of Lyons: St.
Justus (374-381) who died in a monastery in
the Thebaid
and was renowned for the orthodoxy of his doctrine in the struggle
against Arianism
(the church of the Machabees, whither his body was brought, was as
early as the fifty century a place of pilgrimage under the name of
the collegiate church of St. Justus), St. Alpinus and St. Martin
(disciple of St. Martin of Tours; end of fourth century); St.
Antiochus (400-410); St. Elpidius (410-422); St. Sicarius
(422-33); St. Eucherius (c. 433-50), a monk
of Lérins and the author of homilies,
from whom doubtless dates the foundation at Lyons of the
"hermitages" of which more will be said below; St.
Patiens (456-98) who successfully combated the famine and
Arianism, and whom Sidonius Apollinaris praised in a poem; St.
Lupicinus (491-94); St. Rusticus (494-501); St. Stephanus (d.
Before 515), who with St. Avitus of Vienne, convoked a council at
Lyons for the conversion of the Arians; St. Viventiolus (515-523),
who in 517 presided with St. Avitus at the Council of Epaone; St.
Lupus, a monk, afterwards bishop (535-42), probably the first
archbishop, who when signing in 438 the Council
of Orléans added the title of
"metropolitanus"; St. Sardot or Sacerdos (549-542), who
presided in 549 at the Council
of Orléans, and who obtained from King
Childebert the foundation of the general hospital; St.
Nicetius or Nizier (552-73), who received from
the pope the title of patriarch,
and whose tomb was honoured by miracles. The prestige of St.
Nicetius was lasting; his successor St. Priseus (573-588) bore the
title of patriarch, and brought the council of 585 to decide that
national
synods should be convened every three years at
the instance of the patriarch and of the king; St. Ætherius
(588-603), who was a correspondent of St.
Gregory the
Great and who perhaps consecrated St.
Augustine, the Apostle of England; St. Aredius
(603-615); St. Annemundus or Chamond (c. 650), friend of St.
Wilfrid, godfather of Clotaire III, put to death by Ebroin
together with his brother, and patron of the town of
Saint-Chamond; St.
Genesius or Genes (660-679 or 680),
Benedictine
Abbot of Fontenelle, grand
almoner and minister of Queen
Bathilde; St. Lambertus (c. 680-690), also
Abbot of Fontenelle.

At the end of the fifth century
Lyons was the capital of the Kingdom
of Burgundy, but after 534 it passed under the
domination of the kings of France.
Ravaged by the Saracens in 725, the city was restored through the
liberality of Charlemagne
who established a rich library in the monastery of Ile Barbe. In
the time of St. Patiens and the priest Constans (d. 488) the
school of Lyons was famous; Sidonius Apollinaris was educated
there. The letter of Leidrade to Charlemagne (807) shows the care
taken by the emperor for the restoration of learning in Lyons.
With the aid of the deacon Florus he made the school so prosperous
that in the tenth century Englishmen went thither to study. Under
Charlemagne and his immediate successors, the Bishops of Lyons,
whose ascendancy was attested by the number of councils over which
they were called to preside, played an important theological part.
Adoptionism
had no more active enemies than Leidrade (798-814) and Agobard
(814-840). When Felix of Urgel
continued rebellious to the condemnations pronounced against
Adoptionism from 791-799 by the Councils of Ciutad, Friuli,
Ratisbon, Frankfort, and Rome, Charlemagne conceived the idea of
sending to Urgel with Nebridius, Bishop of Narbonne,
and St. Benedict, abbot of the monastery of Aniane, Archbishop
Leidrade, a native of Nuremberg
and Charlemagne's librarian. They preached against Adoptionism in
Spain,
conducted Felix in 799 to the Council of Aachen, where he seemed
to submit to the arguments of Alcuin, and then brought him back to
his diocese., But the submission of Felix was not complete;
Agobard, "Chorepiscopus"
of Lyons, convicted him anew of Adoptionism in a secret
conference, and when Felix died in 815 there was found among his
papers a treatise in which he professed Adoptionism. Then Agobard,
who had become Archbishop of Lyons in 814 after Leidrade's
retirement to the monastery of St. Médard of Soissons,
composed a long treatise which completed the ruin of that heresy.

Agobard displayed great
activity as a pastor and a publicist in his opposition to the Jews
and to various superstitions. His rooted hatred for all
superstition led him in his treatise on images into certain
expressions which savoured of Iconoclasm. The five historical
treatises which he wrote in 833 to justify the deposition of Louis
the Pious, who had been his benefactor, are a stain on his life.
Louis the Pious having been restored to power, caused Agobard to
be deposed in 835 by the Council of Thionville, but three years
later gave him back his see, in which he died in 840. During the
exile of Agobard the See of Lyons had been for a short time
administered by Amalarius of Metz, whom the deacon Florus charged
with heretical opinions regarding the "triforme corpus
Christi", and who took part in the controversies with
Gottschalk
on the subject of predestination. Amolon (841-852) and St. Remy
(852-75) continued the struggle against the heresy of Valence,
which condemned this heresy, and also was engaged in strife with
Hincmar. From 879-1032 Lyons formed part of the Kingdom of
Provence and afterwards of the second Kingdom of Burgundy. When in
1302 Rudolph III, the Sluggard, ceded his states to Conrad the
Salic, Emperor of Germany, the portion of Lyons situated on the
left bank of the Saône became, at least nominally, an
imperial city. Finally Archbishop Burchard, brother of Rudolph,
claimed rights of sovereignty over Lyons as inherited from his
mother, Mathilde of France; in this way the government of Lyons
instead of being exercised by the distant emperor, became a matter
of dispute between the counts who claimed the inheritance and the
successive archbishops.

Lyons attracted the attention
of Cardinal
Hildebrand, who held a council there in 1055
against the simoniacal bishops. In 1076, as Gregory VII, he
deposed Archbishop Humbert (1063-76) for simony. Saint Gebuin
(Jubinus), who succeeded Humbert was the confidant of Gregory VII
and contributed to the reform of the Church by the two councils of
1080 and 1082, at which were excommunicated Manasses of Reims,
Fulk of Anjou, and the monks of Marmoutiers. It was under the
episcopate of Saint Gebuin that Gregory VII (20 April, 1079)
established the primacy
of the Church of Lyons over the Provinces of Rouen,
Tours,
and Sens,
which primacy was specially confirmed by Callistus
II, despite the letter written to him in 1126
by Louis VI in favour of the church of Sens. As far as it regarded
the Province of Rouen this letter was later suppressed by a decree
of the king's council in 1702, at the request of Colbert,
Archbishop of Rouen. Hugh (1081-1106), the successor of St.
Gebuin, the friend of St. Anselm, and for a while legate
of Gregory VII in France and Burgundy, had differences later on
with Victor
III, who excommunicated
him for a time, also with Paschal
II. The latter pope came to Lyons in 1106,
consecrated the basilica of Ainay, and dedicated one of its altars
in honour of the Immaculate
Conception. The Feast
of the Immaculate Conception was solemnized at Lyons about 1128,
perhaps at the instance of St.
Anselm of Canterbury, and St. Bernard wrote to
the canons of Lyons to complain that they should have instituted a
feast without consulting the pope. As soon as Thomas
à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury,
had been proclaimed Blessed
(1173), his cult was instituted at Lyons. Lyons of the twelfth
century thus has a glorious place in the history of Catholic
liturgy and even of dogma, but the twelfth century was also marked
by the heresy of Peter Waldo and the Waldenses,
the Poor Men of Lyons, who were opposed by Jean de Bellème
(1181-1193), and by an important change in the political situation
of the archbishops.

In 1157 Frederick
Barbarossa confirmed the sovereignty of the
Archbishops of Lyons; thenceforth there was a lively contest
between them and the counts. An arbitration effected by the pope
in 1167 had no result, but by the treaty of 1173 Guy, Count of
Forez, ceded to the canons of the primatial church of St. John his
title of count of Lyons and his temporal authority. Then came the
growth of the Commune, more belated in Lyons than in many other
cities, but in 1193 the archbishop had to make some concession to
the citizens. The thirteenth century was a period of conflict.
Three times, in 1207, 1269, and 1290, grave troubles broke out
between the partisans of the archbishop who dwelt in the château
of Pierre Seize, those of the count-canons who lived in a separate
quarter near the cathedral, and those of the townsfolk. Gregory
X attempted, but without success, to restore
peace by two Acts, 2 April, 1273, and 11 Nov., 1274. The kings of
France
were always inclined to side with the commune; after the siege of
Lyons by Louis X (1310) the treaty of 10 April, 1312, definitively
attached Lyons to the Kingdom of France, but, until the beginning
of the fifteenth century the Church of Lyons was allowed to coin
its own money.

If the thirteenth century had
imperilled the political sovereignty of the archbishops, it had on
the other hand made Lyons a kind of second Rome. Gregory X was a
former canon
of Lyons, while Innocent
V, as Peter of Tarantaise, was Archbishop of
Lyons from 1272 to 1273. The violence of the Hohenstaufen
towards the Holy
See forced Innocent
IV and Gregory X to seek refuge at Lyons and
to hold there two general councils (see LYONS,
COUNCILS OF). A free and independent city of
the Kingdom of France as well as of the Holy Empire, located in a
central position between Italy, Spain, France, England, and
Germany, Lyons possessed in the thirteenth century important
monasteries which naturally sheltered distinguished guests and
their numerous followers. For several years Innocent IV dwelt
there with his court in the buildings of the chapter of Saint
Justus. Local tradition relates that it was on seeing the red hat
of the canons of Lyons that the courtiers of Innocent
IV conceived the idea of obtaining from the
Council
of Lyons its decree that the cardinals should
henceforth wear red hats. The sojourn of Innocent IV at Lyons was
marked by numerous works of public utility, to which the pope gave
vigorous encouragement. He granted indulgences to the faithful who
should assist in the construction of the bridge over the Rhône,
replacing that destroyed about 1190 by the passage of the troops
of Richard
Cœur de Lion on their way to the
Crusade.
The building of the churches of St. John and St. Justus was pushed
forward with activity; he sent delegates even to England to
solicit alms for this purpose and he consecrated the high altar in
both churches. At Lyons were crowned Clement
V (1305) and John
XXII (1310); at Lyons in 1449 the antipopeFelix
V renounced the tiara;
there, too, was held in 1512, without any definite conclusion, the
last session of the schismatical Council
of Pisa against Julius
II. In 1560 the Calvinists
took Lyons by surprise, but they were driven out by Antoine
d'Albon, Abbot
of Savigny and later Archbishop of Lyons.
Again masters of Lyons in 1562 they were driven thence by the
Maréchal de Vieuville. At the command of the famous Baron
des Adrets they committed numerous acts of
violence in the region of Montbrison. It was at Lyons that Henry
IV, the converted Calvinist king, married
Marie
de Medicis (9 December, 1600).

Modern Principal Archbishops of
Lyons

The principal Archbishops of
Lyons during the modern period were: Guy
III d'Auvergne, Cardinal de Bologne
(1340-1342), who as a diplomat rendered great service to the Holy
See; Cardinal Jean
de Lorraine (1537-1539); Hippolyte
d'Este, Cardinal of Ferrara (1539-1550), whom
Francis
I named protector of the crown of France at
the court of Paul
III, and a patron of scholars; Cardinal
François
de Tournon (1550-1562), who negotiated several
times between Francis I and Charles
V, combated the Reformation
and founded the Collège de Tournon, which the Jesuits
later made one of the most celebrated educational establishments
of the kingdom; Antoine d'Albon (1562-1574), editor of Rufinus and
Ausonius; Pierre d'Epinac (1573-1599), active auxiliary of the
League; Cardinal Alphonse
Louis du Plessis de Richelieu (1628-1563),
brother of the minister of Louis
XIII; Cardinal
de Tencin (1740-1758); Antoine
de Montazet (1758-1788), a prelate
of Jansenist
tendencies, whose liturgical works will be referred to later, and
who had published for his seminary by the Oratorian Joseph Valla,
six volumes of "Institutiones theologicæ" known as
"Théologie de Lyon", and spread throughout Italy
by Scipio Ricci until condemned by the Index
in 1792; Marbeuf (1788-1799), who died in exile at Lübeck
in 1799 and whose vicar-general
Castillon was beheaded at Lyons in 1794; Antoine Adrien Lamourette
(1742-1794), deputy to the Constitutional Assembly, who brought
about by a curious speech (7 July, 1792) an understanding between
all parties, to which was given the jesting name of "Baiser
Lamourette", and who was constitutional
Bishop of Lyons from 27 March, 1791, to 11
January, 1794, the date of his death on the scaffold. Among the
archbishops subsequent to the Concordat
must be mentioned: Joseph
Fesch under whose episcopate Pius
VII twice visited Lyons, in Nov., 1804, and
April, 1805, and in 1822 the Society
for the Propagation of the Faith was founded;
Maurice
de Bonald (1840-1870), son of the philosopher;
Ginoulhiac
(1870-1875), known by his "Histoire du dogme catholique
pendant let trois premiers siècles".

Chapters and Colleges

Chapters
and Colleges.
At the end of the old regime the primatial chapter consisted of 32
canons,
each able to prove 32 degrees of military nobility; each of these
canons bore the title of Count
of Lyons. The Chapter of Lyons has the honour
of numbering among its canons four popes (Innocent
IV, Gregory
X, Boniface
VIII, and Clement V), 20 cardinals, 20
archbishops, more than 80 bishops, and finally 3 persons of
officially recobnized sanctity, St. Ismidon of Sassenage, later
Bishop of Die
(d. About 1116), Blessed Blessed Louis
Aleman and Blessed François d'Estaing,
later Bishop of Rodez
(d. In 1501). The city of Lyons numbered 5 collegiate churches and
the diocese 14 others. There were 4 chapters of noble canonesses.
The Jesuits
had at Lyons the Collège de la Trinité, founded in
1527 by a lay confraternity which ceded it to them in 1565, the
Collège Notre Dame, founded in 1630, a house of probation,
a professed house, and other colleges in the diocese. Convents
were perhaps more numerous here than in any other part of France.
The Petites Ecoles founded in 1670 by Démia, a priest of
Bourg, contributed much to primary instruction at Lyons. Since the
law of 1875 concerning higher education Lyons possesses Catholic
faculties of theology, letters, sciences, and law.

Principal Saints

Principal Saints.
The Diocese of Lyons honours as saints: St.
Epipodius and his companion St. Alexander,
probably martyrs under Marcus Aurelius; the priest St. Peregrinus
(third century); St. Baldonor (Galmier), a native of Aveizieux,
at first a locksmith, whose piety was remarked by the bishop, St.
Viventiolus; he became a cleric at the Abbey
of St. Justus, then subdeacon,
and died about 760; the thermal resort of "Aquæ
Segestæ", in whose church Viventiolus met him, has
taken the name of St. Galmier; St.
Viator (d. About 390), who followed the
Bishop, St. Justus, to the Thebaid; Sts. Romanus
and Lupicinus (fifth century), natives of the Diocese of Lyons who
lived as solitaries within the present territory of the Diocese
of St. Claude; St. Consortia, d. about 578,
who according to a legend, criticized by Tillemont, was a daughter
of St.
Eucherius; St. Rambert, soldier and martyr in
the seventh century, patron of the town of the same name; Blessed
Jean Pierre Néel, b. in 1832 at Ste. Catherine sur Riviere,
martyred at Kay-Tcheou in 1862.

Among the natives of Lyons must
be mentioned Sidonius
Apollinaris (430-489); Abbé Morellet,
litterateur (1727-1819); the Christian philosopher Ballanche
(1776-1847); the religious painter Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864);
Puvis de Chavannes, painter of the life of Ste Geneviève
(1824-1898). The diocese of Lyons is also the birthplace of the
Jesuit Père Coton (1564-1626), confessor of Henry IV and a
native of Néronde, and Abbé Terray, controller
general of finance under Louis XVI, a native
of Boen (1715-1778). Gerson, whose old age was spent at Lyons in
the cloister of St. Paul, where he instructed poor children, died
there in 1429. St. Francis de Sales died at Lyons, 28 December,
1622. The Curé Colombet de St. Amour was celebrated at St.
Etienne in the seventeenth century for the generosity with which
he founded the Hôtel-Dieu (the charity hospital), also free
schools, and fed the workmen during the famine of 1693.

Hermitages

M. Guigue has catalogued the
eleven "hermitages" (eight of them for men and three for
women) which were distinctive of the ascetical life of Christian
Lyons in the Middle Ages; these were cells in which persons shut
themselves up for life after four years of trial. The system of
hermitages along the lines described by Grimalaius and Olbredus in
the ninth century flourished especially from the eleventh to the
thirteenth century, and disappeared completely in the sixteenth.
These hermitages were the private property of a neighbouring
church or monastery, which installed therein for life a male or
female recluse. The general almshouse
of Lyons, or charity hospital, was founded in 1532 after the great
famine of 1531 under the supervision of eight administrators
chosen from among the more important citizens. The institution of
the jubilee
of St. Nizier dates beyond a doubt to the stay of Innocent IV at
Lyons. This jubilee, which had all the privileges of the secular
jubilees of Rome, was celebrated each time that Low Thursday, the
feast of St. Nizier, coincided with 2 April, i.e. whenever the
feast of Easter
itself was on the earliest day allowed by the paschal cycle,
namely 22 March. In 1818, the last time this coincidence occurred,
the feast of St. Nizier was not celebrated. But the cathedral of
St. John also enjoys a great jubilee each time that the feast of
St.
John the Baptist coincides with Corpus
Christi, that is, whenever the feast of Corpus
Christi falls on 24 June. It is certain that in 1451 the
coincidence of these two feasts was celebrated with special
splendour by the population of Lyons, then emerging from the
troubles of the Hundred
Years' War, but there is no document to prove
that the jubilee indulgence
existed at that date. However, Lyonnese tradition places the first
great jubilee in 1451; the four subsequent jubilees took place in
1546, 1666, 1734 and 1886.

Liturgy

Liturgy.
Some authors have held that the Gallican
Liturgy was merely the Liturgy of Ephesus,
brought to Gaul by the founders of the Church of Lyons. Mgr
Duchesne considers that during the two centuries after Emperor
Constantine the prestige of the Church of
Lyons was not such that it could dictate a liturgy across the
Pyrenees, the Channel and the Alps, and lure from Roman influence
half the Churches of Italy. In his opinion it was not Lyons, but
Milan,
which was the centre of the diffusion of the Gallican Liturgy.
Under Leidrade and Agobard the Church of Lyons, although
fulfilling the task of purifying its liturgical texts exacted by
the Holy See, upheld its own traditions. "Among the Churches
of France", wrote St. Bernard to the canons of Lyons, "that
of Lyons has hitherto had ascendancy over all the others, as much
for the dignity of its see as for its praiseworthy institutions.
It is especially in the Divine Office that this judicious Church
has never readily acquiesced in unexpected and sudden novelties,
and has never submitted to be tarnished by innovations which are
becoming only to youth". In the seventeenth century Cardinal
Bona, in his treatise "De divina
psalmodia", renders similar homage to the Church of Lyons.
But in the eighteenth century Bishop Montazet, contrary to the
Bull
of Pius
V on the Breviary,
changed the text of the Breviary and the Missal,
from which there resulted a whole century of troubles for the
Church of Lyons. The efforts of Pius
IX and Cardinal
Bonald to suppress the innovations of Montazet
provoked great resistance on the part of the canons, who feared an
attempt against the traditional Lyonnese ceremonies. This
culminated in 1861 in a protest on the part of the clergy and the
laity, as much with regard to the civil power as to the Vatican.
Finally, on 4 Feb., 1864, at a reception of the parish priests of
Lyons, Pius IX declared his displeasure at this agitation and
assured them that nothing should be changed in the ancient
Lyonnese ceremonies; by a Brief of 17 March, 1864, he ordered the
progressive introduction of the Roman Breviary and Missal in the
diocese. The primatial church of Lyons adopted them for public
services 8 December, 1869. One of the most touching rites of the
ancient Gallican liturgy, retained by the Church of Lyons, is the
blessing of the people by the bishop at the moment of Communion.

Churches

Churches.
The cathedral
of St. John, begun in the twelfth century on the ruins of a sixth
century church, was completed in 1476; worthy of note are the two
crosses to right and left of the altar, preserved since the
council of 1274 as a symbol of the union of the churches, and the
Bourbon chapel, built by Cardinal
de Bourbon and his brother Pierre
de Bourbon, son-in-law of Louis
XI, a masterpiece of fifteenth century
sculpture. The church of Ainay, dating from the tenth and eleventh
centuries, is of the Byzantine style. The doorway of St. Nizier's
(fifteenth century) was carved in the sixteenth century by
Philibert Delorme. The collegiate church of St. John Baptist at
Saint
Chamond, now destroyed, presented a singular
arrangement; the belfry was situated below the church, to which
those coming from the city could only gain access by climbing two
hundred steps; the roof of the church served as pavement for the
courtyard of the fortress, the circuit of which might be made in a
carriage.

Pilgrimages

Pilgrimages.
The chief pilgrimages of the diocese are Notre Dame de Fourvières,
a sanctuary
dating from the time of St. Pothinus, on the site of a temple of
Venus. In 1643 the people of Lyons consecrated themselves to Notre
Dame de Fourvières and pledged themselves to a solemn
procession on 8 September of each year; the new basilica
of Fourvières, consecrated in 1896, attracts numerous
pilgrims. Notre Dame de Benoite-Vaux at Saint-Etienne,
a pilgrimage founded in 1849 by the Marists
who had been miraculously preserved from a flood; Notre-Dame de
Valfleury, near Saint
Chamond, a pilgrimage dating from the eighth
century and re-established in 1629 after a plageue; Notre Dame de
Vernay, near Roanne.

The Brothers
of St. John of God have their mother-house for
France at Lyons. The Society of the Priests of St. Irenæus
is engaged in teaching and giving diocesan missions. In 1901 the
Diocese of Lyons had a diocesan "grand
séminaire" and a university
seminary at Lyons, a seminary of philosophy at Alix and five
"petits séminaires" at St. Jean de Lyon, Duerne,
St. Jodard, Vernières, and Montbrison; the first of these
was founded under Charlemagne.

The female congregations native
to the Diocese of Lyons are numerous; the following deserve
special mention: The Sisters of Notre Dame de Fourvières,
founded 1732 at Usson, for teaching and nursing, with the
mother-house at Lyons; the Sisters of St. Charles, founded 1680 by
the Abbé Démia, teaching and nursing, with
mother-house at Lyons; the Religious of the Perpetual Adoration of
the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, founded 1820 by the Curé
Ribier, with their mother-house at Lajarasse; the Religious of the
Five Wounds of Our Lord, founded at Lyons in 1886 as a
contemplative, nursing, and teaching order, which has houses in
Canada; the Sisters of the Child Jesus, teaching, with their
mother-house at Claveisolles, the origin of which dates from the
opening of a little school in 1830 by Josephine du Sablon; the
Franciscan Sisters of the Propagation of the Faith, founded in
1836 by Mother Moyne for the care of incurables with mother-house
at Lyons; the Religious
of Jesus-Mary, a teaching congregation,
founded in 1818 by the priest André Coindre and Claudine
Thevenet, whose mother-house installed at Lyons governs a number
of houses abroad; the Ladies of Nazareth, teaching, founded in
1822 at Montmirail (Marne) by the Duchesse de La Rochefoucauld
Doudeauville, whose mother-house removed to Oullins in 1854
governs several establishments in Palestine and at London; the
Religious of Our Lady of Missions, founded at Lyons in 1861 for
the missions of Oceanica; the abbey of the Benedictines of the
Holy Heart of Mary, founded 1804, the first house of this
congregation to be restored after the Revolution; the Religious of
the Holy Family, founded in 1825 by the Curé
of St. Bruno les Chartreux for mission work among workmen; the
Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, founded in 1838 by pious working
women for education and nursing, with mother-house at Lyons, also
sends subjects to the missions of Armenia and America.

Statistics

Statistics. At the end of the
nineteenth century the religious congregations maintained in the
Diocese of Lyons 2 maternity hospitals, 3 day nurseries, 193
nurseries, 2 children's hospitals, 9 hospitals for incurables, 1
asylum for blind girls, 4 asylums for deaf mutes, 5 boys'
orphanages, 49 girls' orphanages, 4 workrooms, 3 industrial
schools, 2 schools of apprentices, 5 institutions for the rescue
of young women, 1 house of correction for young women, 1 house of
correction for boys, 3 institutions for the reform of adults, 61
hospitals, infirmaries, or asylums for the aged, 19 houses for the
care of the sick in their homes, 2 homes for convalescents, 5
houses of retreat, 2 insane asylums. In 1908, three years after
the Separation Law went into effect, the Archdiocese of Lyons had
1,464,665 inhabitants, 74 parishes, 595 branch churches, 585
vicariates.